


Eyes That Have Never Seen

by hungrytiger



Series: Evidence You Cannot See [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Clan Politics, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Politics, Sisters, clan seal, consanguinity, kissing cousins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 01:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11681289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungrytiger/pseuds/hungrytiger
Summary: Cloud Nin attempt to kidnap Hinata when she is young.





	1. Prologue- The Kidnapping

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Compatibility](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2294936) by [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloud Nin attempt to kidnap Hinata when she is young.

Her fingers breaking were what woke her. Later, she would wonder, did she hear them snap or only feel the blooming pain? She screams, but there is something pushing against her tongue, cloth choking against her tonsils and down her throat. Unexpected warmth rushes around her temples in pounding coils, and the world is suddenly, and sickeningly, in fuller view than it was before. It makes her ill, but the bile has no where to go and she is gagging and coughing when hands wrap around her, and suddenly, they are moving over roofs.

Her body slams against someone else's, first into her captor then his friend, in this frantic scramble over buildings. Ahead of them are city walls. Behind them, Hinata sees the Hyuuga compound lights flicker on, people's shadows flooding through the doors. Her captors take no notice. Are they scared? Hinata cannot tell; they have holes in their eyes that make them hard to read. Their eyes, more than anything else, scare her, and she wants her father. She wants anyone, so long as they would take her away from these men. She kicks and kicks against these hands that dig in tighter, tight enough to draw blood.

The world blurs, going too fast for these new eyes to take in, and then, somehow, like she wanted, there is her father on top of the wall, running to meet them. Bodies crash into one another as they fight, nothing like the dances her father and uncle show in training. Arms and legs dive around each other, the sheer drop to the country on one side, the city on the other. In a move, she is thrown. There are stars above her and the ground below. Wind is screaming past her ears as she plummets and someone else is screaming too, but it still is not her. Above, her father's movements never slow or falter in his fight.

The impact jars her new vision from her eyes. She hits first flesh then the ground and arms are wrapping tight around. She struggles against them till she hears her name. Above her are white eyes, reassuring in their normalness. The face is a little like her father's but more worn. Her uncle pulls the cloth from her mouth and runs a hand across her face.

" Are you unharmed?" he asks. Before she can answer, veins bloom in a lattice across his temples and a dull thud sounds from behind. His limbs at awkward angles, her captor lays spread-eagle across the ground. Blood dribbles out his mouth, and his eyes with holes in them are staring up into nothing. A moment later, her father lands beside them.

His are the first arms she does not struggle against tonight, and he just holds her for several minutes. She can hear his ragged breathing against her neck; feel his heartbeat with her head against his chest.

"Hiashi-sama," Her uncle is at their side, whispering furiously, "We must alert the Hokage, and Hinata-sama's hands have been damaged. A medic-nin needs to look at them. Come. We cannot stay here."

Her father does not answer, but he moves, so it is the same result. In a gesture mimicking her uncle's, her father brushes his hands across her face. Along her jaw line, over her cheeks, across her lips and carefully tracing all around her eyes, his fingers travel.

" You activated your Byakugan, and so young too. Perhaps there will be hope yet. I am proud of you this night, my daughter." Her hands are pulsing, and she smells of sick, but she almost manages not move under his gaze. Turning, neither man waits for her to follow them home. Their Byakugan will see that she does.


	2. Some Unseen Place on the Opposite Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When someone marries into the Hyuuga, Hinata learns to make the seal. A daughter of the clan defends her own. Taking place thirteen years after the prologue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place 13 years after the prologue, with Hanabi at age 10, and Hinata roughly 15 or 16. 
> 
> This story contains mentions of insects.

Yuuiko's mark burns across her forehead, skin rising, welt-like, underneath fingertips. Close as she is, Hinata can smell the smoldering skin. The room swims in heavy incense meant to cover this, but Yuuiko's face looks green under her father's hand and Hinata winces in sympathy. Inuzuka are bred for heightened senses of smell; the stench must be making her gag.

"Hinata," her father says in harsh undertones, a reminder to pay attention. He lifts his hands and hers rush in underneath his, pressing a cloth to the woman's forehead.

"So all will know who you are and what you have vowed," her father intones the ceremonial words. "Wear this seal proudly as a reminder of who you are, showing the might of the Hyuuga Clan."

And where Inuzuka Yuuiko had sunk down to her knees, Hyuuga Yuuiko rises, grasping Hinata's wrists for support, before sliding her fingers down and taking the cloth into her own hands. Yuuiko says nothing to her, and Hinata is pushed aside as her uncle comes to wrap his new wife's bandages, an intimacy unique to her clan. Hinata turns her head aside, only to find the Inuzuka are staring openly at this private act. She stares back, that horrible feeling, as if people's chopsticks had just touched, invades the whole room, but before anything can happen, a hand comes down on her shoulder, and she is steered towards the door.

It is not, as she first suspected, her father, but the more narrow, pointed features of Neji searching her over once they are out of the temple.

"Did you draw guard duty again, Neji-niisan?" she asks, referring to her father's mandate that a Branch House member guard her when she's not on a mission or on Hyuuga grounds. In her heart, it is another sign that she is again able to take her place in the clan; that her father is no longer so willing to write her off or look her over. But that doesn't change that its annoying for her and degrading to the person saddled with the job of shadowing. Neji is polite enough to not answer and instead says, "You are showing your surprise too easily still."

She feels her cheeks burning.

"N-no, it is just, they are-"

"Not of this clan."

"Yes," she agrees, seeing the double meaning in those words, both an excuse and warning. They could not have anticipated the sealing; they are not of this clan. They are not of this clan; do not show weakness where it can be used against you. She breathes for a moment, works to put on the mask of Heir, a woman with no emotions and perfect poise.

"Did you enjoy yourself, Niisan?" she starts the conversation over, practicing that poise on Neji before they dive back into the crush of people at the temple. He shrugs in reply, but makes no move to guide them back to the others.

"Did you?" he asks, and she shrugs back. Hinata likes weddings; she is shown at her best at them, or at least, if not at her best, precisely, then at least Hanabi is shown in no better light than she. Hanabi is oblivious and distant with people, even rude, where Hinata is only shy and awkward with them. One, it turns out, is an easier problem to cure than the other. But today is not really about a wedding for her, and or any other Hyuuga. Today, a new Branch member will sleep under their roof tonight, and Hinata helped make it so.

"Do you see Hanabi-chan?"

There are a million people here to talk to; it is not every day a shinobi leaves one clan to go to another. Politics will be abuzz behind the cups of guests and in the words they don't say, but at that moment all she wants is to find her family and go home. She should play the Heir, but wants no more of those stares.

Neji jerks his head to one side in response to her question, and there she is in the distance. A girl being spun around is, on closer inspection, not some little child, but ten year-old Hanabi, goofing off with Ko. She is missing a geta and her obi's been knocked askew. The two's laughter is loud and Hanabi does not even take care to hide her teeth behind her hand. Their cousin Ko, despite his age, is not much better. Had he even been in the temple for the ceremony? It was his own father whose new bride they had welcomed!

Still, they looked to be having fun, which was more than anyone else could say. Hinata sighs.

"I suppose we'd better-"

"Better have a nice long chat with my teammate, Kiba," a voice cuts in, and a hand lands on her shoulder, fingers pressing into the area just below her collarbone. The claw-like nails, pressed carefully flat against her instead of digging in, tell her just as well as the voice who's there.

"Kiba-san," Neji says.

"H-hello, Kiba-kun," she says. She can't turn and greet him properly with his grip still so tight. She wiggles her shoulder, a cue for him to let her go, and, after a minute, he does.

"We need to talk."

"Alri-"

"Alone."

His tone is friendly enough, but when she turns, she catches a sense of- something- in his stance. A tightness in the shoulders perhaps, or an awkwardness about the arms, like he's uncomfortable letting them just hang. But perhaps it is just the dress cloths giving a sense off-ness about her teammate, or seeing him without Akamaru. She smiles and says, "Niisan, its alright. I'll catch up to you. Go make Hanabi-chan behave. I don't want Father to see. I'll meet up with you both after I'm done with Kiba-kun."

Neji stares at them for a moment, opens his mouth, but then shrugs and leaves. Kiba lets him walk maybe thirty feet before grabbing her by her shoulder again and pulling her away.

"What the hell was that?" he growls, and this time his nails dig in. She winces.

"K-kiba-kun, that hurts!"

He pushes her out of his grip, and she almost trips over her feet.

"Explain to me, why my aunt, my kin, has one of those cage seal-things you people inflict on your own! Explain to me what you were doing up there, parading around in front of everybody, hurting her, making her some slave like you have any right to-"

"S-stop it!"

Her face burns, not like a blush, but as if he had physically reached out and slapped her it stings. She has hurt people. She knows how to hurt people. Hyuuga Yuuiko, though, didn't even bleed.

She says so, and Kiba sneers, lips curling up to reveal teeth.

"Is that what you think?"

They were yelling just a second ago. Feeling drains from her face when she thinks whether anybody heard them, whether the entire wedding party did. A slight pressure around her eyes and then she's seeing as she was meant to, with the byakugan reaching back and around, ensuring her that people were too far away.

And then something wet hits her face, stinging her eyes. Her hand reaches up. Kiba has spit right in her face.

"I'm right here. You should be paying attention to me, answering me. What. Did. You. Do?"

"I-I sealed her."

The voice that speaks is small, and lying. She only pressed a cloth to a wound. She reaches up, wipes at her face. "It is o-only a ceremony; i-it doesn't mean anything except s-she's now part of our clan."

"That's shit! You don't think I know what it means? You think we all didn't hear Neji-san when he told all of fucking Konoha what it means? You gave her that, so she has to do what you want or you'll kill her with a fucking mark on her head!"

"No, no, no!"

The lack of air in her lungs is suffocating.

"You stood right there and enslaved her, you-"

"That's not what the seal does!"

He sneers again, fangs bared, and for the first time, it strikes Hinata how disgusting they are, like an animal smiling back from the face of a human.

"The seal is to protect people. People know! They know what our eyes can do, but they know what the seal does too and don't bother trying to steal them. It protects us!"

A memory flashes, nightmare-like across her brain: arms grabbing her, gagging on cloth stuffed down her throat, that terrible instant when it looked like her father's reach wouldn't come close enough to help her, and, later, understanding men would always want to gouge out her eyes, make her a human science experiment because she saw the world differently than they did. Why doesn't Kiba see that?

"Us? Then what about you, Hin-at-a-sa-ma?" he mimics the name Branch House calls her.

"Main House doesn't get the seal, y-you know that."

"Sounds pretty hypocritical to me. Auntie's not even real Hyuuga. No creepy bloodline to protect. You all just want power over other people. You make me sick."

Fury seethes and builds, pushing against her chakra coils, making her eyes itch. Her tongue's a knife in her mouth, speaking before she realizes what words are coming out.

"You know what makes me, sick, Kiba-kun? The fact that you are looking down your nose at us, when your clan... fucks with your ninjistsu and genes, mixing them with some mutt's! That you pretend your mother and sister don't breed your kinsmen the same way they breed their dogs."

They stare at one another. The sounds of the party break in, laughs punctuating silence and rattling against her bones, so suddenly brittle she thinks they will break. This is her friend, she thinks, and Kiba says, "That's pretty rich coming from you, Hinata-chan, considering the only reason that uncle of yours got to marry my aunt is your dad thinks they're too old to breed any weak genes. And he'll marry you off for your genes too. That make you a bitch?"

Her face is wet, she realizes, just at the edges of her eyes. She isn't crying. She refuses to.

"We welcomed your kin in as our own. We gave her a symbol to wear proudly."

The voice that speaks belongs to a woman with no emotion; this time her poise is not something she must practice first. The Heir's words come easily to her lips.

"Then why cover it up?" This is his voice as she has never heard it: defeated. The Heir speaks on.

"She is ours now. That is the sign she is ours. We aren't perfect; the seal isn't perfect. The pain is makes must be terrible, but I've only seen it used three times my whole life."

"Three too many."

"T-three too many," she agrees, that steady voice wavering just a bit. "B-but she has joined our clan. We did not found this city, but we were on this land before the clans Senjuu or Uchiha even were. She wears our pride. She wears our seal so no idiot makes a mistake and tries to gouge out her eyes just because she lives with us! Now, e-excuse, me."

She bows formally, if clumsily, and turns to leave. Kiba says nothing to hold her back, but still she doesn't get very far. In the trees Neji is waiting, just as her byakugan told her he would be.

"You think about it sometimes, don't you?" he asks.

How would it feel to walk always safe, protected by the seal, and knowing at the same time such thing would mean her father had cast her aside?

Yes. She thinks about it.

"W-where is Hanabi-chan?" she says. Neji's hand reaches up, thumb running hard down the side of her nose, and comes away sticky with spit.

"I sent her home ahead."

The seal stands between them and Hinata doesn't quite dare to brush her hand against his head bindings. But she knows underneath what his forehead looks like without seeing. She understands.

"She married. She chose."

She understands what it is to be both proud and ashamed.

The rest of the evening drags on. A headache starts to pull at her temples and her stutter keeps slipping back. She can't remember anyone's name even though she keeps getting introduced to people and she knows she must look a mess. Her father keeps shooting her irritated glances that get even worse as her stutter does. His mood isn't improved when he discovers Hanabi's escaped the festivities either, but still, even when they finally get home, Hinata procrastinates doing the last nightly chore of getting out bedding. As awful as this night has been she doesn't want it to end; tomorrow is Team Eight training and Kiba still hates her for sure.

When she gets to their training grounds for the day, the sun is just a line over the Hokage's mountain, the light still so uncertain she that feels Shino's bugs on her before she sees where he's pressed up against the indent of a tree trunk. Unsurprisingly, Kiba and Akamaru are late, and when they do arrive Kiba announces without consulting anyone that an all-out, three-way fight is what they're going to do. It drags on for hours, as much a battle of wits as of skill, with harried pauses and unspoken truces to catch their breath, rethink, and then attack again. They are all breathing heavy by the end, hours later, and starved for food. Instead, they share a canteen of water, long-heated from sitting in the sun. They hand it to her last, even after the dog, a rebuke from yesterday, she supposes. It does exactly nothing for her thirst but she drinks it anyway, only pulling it from her mouth when Kiba stretches and asks Shino what it is his family does when other nin marry into the clan.

Suddenly, screwing on the cap to the canteen needs much more attention. Hinata stares down at her hands and pretends not to hear. Shino says, "They don't."

"Don't what?"

"Other shinobi don't marry Aburame."

Shino never elaborates, which is strange because he always wants to tell more. He sees intimacy in the smallest gestures and insults there was well. Kiba has chosen how to renew their confrontation with surprising precision. It is both easy and impossible to avoid. She chews at her lip for a moment before giving in, and asking why.

"Do you know the history of my clan?"

Hinata shakes her head and smiles grimly at Shino's usual way of answering questions with other questions. It will make the battleground of this argument much more difficult to manage. They leave too many loopholes to drag their third teammate into the middle of things, and she doesn't want two people hating her right now.

Kiba waves Shino on, collapsing to the ground. Shino snorts at his antics and sits too. Biting her lip again, Hinata sinks down, though more slowly and gracefully. A Hyuuga never forgets manners; Father may have been less successful in teaching her taijutsu, but that lesson she has never forgot. It is actions like this that will keep Kiba from forgetting what he's fighting against. Not her, little Hinata-chan, but the Hyuuga Heir and over a thousand years of continued clan survival. No other clan, she comforts herself, can claim their success. It makes her sit a little straighter.

"Every person's body is slightly different. You know this," Shino reminds them. "Different arrangements of chakra coils, different scents. Some combinations of chemicals are more attractive to insects than others."

Kiba makes a noise as if to ask something, but suppresses himself. Hinata sits tensed for the word that will reignite his anger.

"Many generations ago, the Aburame were simple bee-keepers, until a daughter of the clan noticed that insects -- mosquitoes, flies, kikkai, beetles -- were particularly attracted to her. In a group of people, she would be the only one to suffer bites and swarms." Shino's tone changes, becomes rhythmic and flowing. It's a children's bedtime tale. Hinata wonders how many other clan's origins sound like this. Her own history was taught to her as mythic, stories to drown out fever dreams, calm nightmares, and teach strength to a girl whose bogeymen were real. Some of her favorite memories occurred the nights following her abduction, when her uncle Hizaishi would tell his dark but true stories of the Hyuuga clan to her and Neji.

"Yeah, and?"

Kiba's voice brings her back to the present as he kicks up his legs, swinging dust in the air. Akamaru nips at his feet in play, as bored as his master. Clearly, the Inuzuka have no such stories to teach them pride.

Shino shrugs, the only indication he heard his teammate at all, and continues, "And one day rogue ninja attacked her village. She had rolled in mud that morning, trying to keep her scent from the flies, and so the trackers missed her. She was the only survivor."

Hinata cringes and thinks of her own family, how they would look slaughtered, faces mangled and wounds gaping. The story has finally captured Kiba's attention too, for the same look is mirrored on his face.

"She traveled to a temple and asked the monks to train her in chakra control, under the guise of learning meditation to release her grief. Then she wrote a summoning contract, but because she had no master to guide her; she did it wrong. Instead of summoning a spirit beast from the otherworld, she summoned 'that to which she held affinity.' In other words, insects. She was very lucky the kikkai answered first. Some other insects would have eaten her alive."

"That's nice and all, but I don't get what that has to do with marriage rules," Kiba says, obviously trying to circle the conversation back around to his original purpose.

"I'd think ninja would be better, really -we know all about disgusting," he shoots her a look as if to say what is really disgusting him, and the next words are for her. "So... we're less likely to freak over the-bug- thing."

"Perhaps," Shino concedes, and, if he's aware of what Kiba isn't saying, he's polite enough to pretend ignorance. "But the kikkai live in our blood now, and have learned to eat chakra; we changed them as they changed us. It is symbiosis, not control."

Or perhaps not so ignorant as all that. Is he trying to give her an opening to point out all clans sacrifice for what their descendants gain? She opens her mouth, but then Shino twitches suddenly, kikkai crawling across his wrist and taking wing. And she realizes, no, he is doing no such thing. He is speaking to them plainly while they hide their intentions behind his words. She grips her pant leg, palms sweaty.

"Also..." he starts, and guilt crawls over her like kikkai across skin.

"If it is a clan secret, Shino-kun, please don't worry! We would never ask you to betray your family's trust."

This last part she means for Kiba, who has the grace to at least look a little guilty. He is more loyal to his own clan, after all, than anything else except for the village and, perhaps, them. So why can't he understand that feeling in anyone else? Shino-kun though, must think she means the comment was aimed at him- and why not when he's the one she's addressing? - because he unzips his collar and says, "It's not a secret, precisely. But it's easier to show you first."

What is underneath writhes out of sync with Shino's rising and falling chest, as if alive, but separate. Light reflects first one way then another, and not till they scatter does Hinata realize they are staring at more kikkai than she's ever seen outside a fight and that they are not just crawling across him, but though him, into a festering wound, under the skin and on into the organs beneath. Kiba must figure it out at the same time she does, because he yanks her backward against his chest, earlier fight forgotten. Shino's shoulders fall inward, hunching a little, and Hinata tries to school her face.

They are wrecking something when Shino is showing them his most private face.

"May I... touch?" she asks, slowly scooting forward, reminding herself over and over not to think about the bugs living in his chest, or worse inside his face, in his eyes.

She is so busy telling herself not to think that, in fact, she misses the moment three kikkai land on the very tip of her finger where nail and skin meet. Chakra pushes through her coils and, with her byakugan activated, she watches them pull sips of more chakra through her fingers and out into the air to eat. Except for the lightest brush of little legs, she doesn't feel a thing.

"They are telling me about you," Shino says. "They say 'food' and 'salt.' What they don't say is 'safe.'"

She listens with only half an ear to his further explanations, attention on the inscets' dance-like movements atop Shino's palm, and on trying to stay small enough to escape Kiba's notice now that he's been distracted. Her own anger is still simmering, but she wants this confrontation ended.

Kiba's voice breaks her concentration when he says, "Wait a minute. If you're saying what I think you're saying... you mean, when you get married, your bugs crawl into your wife's skin and set up house?"

She thinks she's failed at ending things, that this jab is somehow meant for her, when Kiba shoots out his hand and pulls them both back several feet. They stumble right over Akamaru, who plants himself at Kiba's feet with ears flattened and hackles raised. Kiba's nails dig into her skin again as he presses her closer, as if closer contact with him can keep her from contamination.

"That's sick! How can you-- what about-- oh, that is just wrong."

Hinata winces at the way the words echo their fight yesterday, and she twists her wrist free of his grip.

"Kiba-kun, thank you for your concern, but please don't jump to conclusions or think badly of Shino-kun. He told us that ninja are immune to that type of colonization."

With her still-active byakugan, she can see the way Kiba's fingers rub against his now-empty palm and the aborted motion of his arm jerking to reach back out. But she keeps her face turned towards Shino when she says what she hopes will end or at least stall her and Kiba's fight. After all, it was her Kiba wanted to hurt; using Shino as canon fodder wasn't fair.

"And in any case, I cannot think Shino-kun or his family would allow their kikkai to-- to join anyone who had not agreed to the partnership."

Like Hyuuga Yuuiko had agreed to the seal. Like she had agreed after no less than five meetings with the Hyuuga Head and with Hinata, as heir, looking on.

"Exactly. Because the kikkai spread, we can only marry those they find chemically compatible. But the kikkai only test blood, not personality, appearance, or talents. We judge that," Shino says, and then adds in a way that makes her think he knew what was happening all along, "And we make the situation very clear to anyone who considers marrying into the clan."

Kiba shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet, lifting open-handed arms in a gesture meant as an apology.

"Yeah, well, I still say it's creepy. And... Oh, yuck, you have bugs in your blood. What does that do to your kids?"

Then again, apologies were never Kiba's style. Did he realize how that sounded? But Shino's voice when he answers Kiba's subsequent jokes and questions betrays no hurt emotion, and Hinata knows well, her teammate can sense offense in even the slightest remark. Kiba and she, are forgiven, or did nothing wrong to Shino's mind.

She lets the conversation drift on around her, only breaking in when Kiba threatens to take a joke too far. Shino relaxes his stance, and Kiba's facial markings crinkle when he grins at a joke he thinks particularly good. She tries to enjoy both these things, but twists her knuckles at the thought of the fighting resuming when Kiba announces he will walk her home. Shino, to her relief, follows. Too far behind, true, to hear any conversation, but before she can say more than five words about the wedding, a voice interrupts.

"Hinata-sama, ready to go home?"

Neji is waiting for her once again. He must have drawn bodyguard duty again, she thinks, and feels guilty for making him waste his time on her two days in a row. But he doesn't look bothered, merely thoughtful, and there is no way to tell how long he'd stood there watching, or what his perceptive eyes saw.

"Looks like we won't be needed for escort duty after all, Shino," Kiba says in a clipped voice. The annoyance could be for her, or for Neji, who Kiba's disliked since before their first Chuunin Exam. The uncertainty would have bothered her for the rest of the night, except Kiba answers her unspoken question with his next words.

"Hey, Hinata-chan, good workout today. And, uh, thanks, I guess, for... helping, or whatever, at the wedding. Yuuikio-obasan looked pretty good for a broad her age, and she really loves that guy she's married to, you know."

His hand goes up to the back of his neck in a gesture Shino's told him a million times gives him away as nervous. But like Hinata and her fingers, Kiba's never been able to break the habit. She can't help but smile at this. Perhaps somewhere, her words had gotten through, or maybe they hadn't but he was choosing to let go anyway. Beside them, Neji and Shino watch on.

They say their good byes and Hinata thinks she's left their unpleasant argument behind when she and Neji turn to leave, but, instead, she finds it walks with them down the street, sits beside her at the dinner table, and, like her, leaves its plate mostly untouched. Together they rise and leave the table as soon as is polite.

She flees to room to escape her thoughts but find they are already waiting for her there. Only an idle body has an idle mind,her uncle told her once. I love to work in my gardens to think, her mother had said. She risings, destination firm in her mind.

Neji is still standing in the hall by her door when she steps out of. Guards are not needed inside the Hyuuga compound, where everyone would jump to her or Hanabi's defense supposedly, if attacked. But he's standing there anyway. Just as if on guard duty, he doesn't say much, but follows her out into the gardens. Stray streamers are still tangled in the branches, left over from wedding decorations that had been so enchanting the day before.

"Neji-niisan," she says. "You don't need to be here. You don't have to."

He kneels down and his fingers find a weed to pull. How he even knows that it's a weed instead of a normal plant she's not sure, unless it was something he'd observed her do before.

"No," he agrees. "I don't. But you hardly ate anything and you've been chewing your lip. You're worried about something and I- I am bound to help you, you know."

It makes her uncomfortable to be reminded of how everything he does, he does because of who his father was and because of who her father is. Especially when it's the seal she's been worrying about anyway. Kiba is right just as much as he is wrong. For some, seals served no purpose but to bind, to take choices from their hands. She doesn't like it, even if she doesn't think that's all there is to say about sealing either.

"You're chewing your lips. Again."

Hinata stops, runs a tongue over the worried skin.

Neji pulls out another weed and then another, but then his fingers wrap around something that is not a weed and she kneels down to stop him. Like Kiba and Shino, Neji has grown tremendously in the last year. He has always been bigger, thanks to that extra year, but now his hands dwarf hers. And not only bigger, they can do more too. Seal or no seal, here is not a man who would be felled or caught by enemies, no matter how much they might want his eyes.

"What do you think about the curse seal?" she says.

He pulls his hands away from hers.

"I believe you know what I think. Since... that."

She realizes dimly he means the finals of their first chuunin exam, over three years ago now. Actually, she'd collapsed due to injuries he'd inflicted during her own exam defeat, and had never heard exactly what'd been said. But it seemed inappropriate to remind him of that part of their past just now, and it isn't like she doesn't know, really, what he thinks.

"You must hate me still, then."

"You're only talking about this because of Kiba-san. You're wrong. I don't."

Neji stands, brushes off dirt. "I was... proud, that you were up there, with your father yesterday. Proud of what it meant, I guess."

And despite herself, Hinata smiles at that. "Yes, my father seems to have decided I'll probably survive as a shinobi; I'm worth training again. As heir again, maybe."

It was her proudest moment too, to realize her father thought she might be worthy of her birthright. It means even more to have someone she trusts say it too. She stands up, letting that sense of pride, so unfamiliar, slide across her skin for just another moment before continuing, "But Inuzuka Yuuiko, she doesn't have the Byakugan. She isn't really Hyuuga. I didn't need to..."

She leaves the rest unsaid because in fact, she hadn't done anything yesterday, but press a bandage to a woman's head. She'd stood there and watched. She'd seen exactly how to make a seal, so that next time she could make one herself, as her father would one day expect her to do, but she did nothing this time. In a way, perhaps that is worse.

A hand comes up to her head and holds it steady as a thumb brushes under bangs and across her forehead slowly, first once, then twice. It is a strangely intimate gesture, even with no seal for him to feel there, and what is even more intimate is the way he forces her not to turn away from what he says.

"There are many things I can't have, can't do because of this seal. Choices that I might have made, had I gotten to make choices on my own. But," his hand moves down over her cheekbone, then jaw, shoulder, and then completely away to hang at his side. "There are still choices I can make. Your father told me; my father made his own choices in the end, because he loved his brother, me, his family. I hate that I don't have him, that he's not here. Everyday, I hate again the choice he made. But I can understand it. There are people I love too. Yuuiko-san made a choice to be with a person she loved even if it cost her to do so."

She turned away. "Yes."

"You told Kiba-san there are other things the seal does too," he says to her back. "Do you believe that?"

She turns around, stricken. "I- Y-yes, I-I still dream, some times, w-what they m-might have done to me, when th-they kidnapped me. B-b-ut they won't try that on you, or-"

She falters, unsure how to continue, ashamed, when there are so many ways to die, that she thinks to protect her family from only one.

"I hate the seal," Neji says simply. "I hate it, but I am glad, as you say, for that."

There seems to be nothing to say to that, so she merely bows to him and says, "Thank you for the company, Niisan. I should go. It is late."

It is not till she is at the steps of the egawa that he answers her, only a voice behind her now.

"You are not yet free of the seal either, Hinata-sama. Your father might still choose your sister over you. But if you are, think of this night. Use it to make the choices you will be asked to choose."

She inhales, catches a scent that is not there, of burning skin mixed with incense, and presses her fingertips close.


	3. The Space Between Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanabi is ten when she decides she will never marry

Hanabi is ten when she decides that she will never marry. They are at the wedding of her second-cousin such-and-such times removed Ko's father. Father is always dragging them to these sorts of things. Weddings. Funerals. Births. Graduation ceremonies. Father goes to them all and takes his daughters with. Part of what it means to be of the Main House, he lectures. Part of what it is to be Head of a family.

But this time there's something a little different about the ceremony, and Hanabi should know; she's been to enough of these things. Father should be wishing the couple well as they go off to celebrate and leave Father, Hinata, and Hanabi free to go home. But instead, everybody is shuffling out one building to another, filing in one by one. Hanabi goes to fall into line when a hand reaches out to grab her.

"You don't want to go in there."

Ko-niisan's fingers dig into her, but his face is friendly enough, even if he's looking at his new mother, entering the room behind his father, instead of looking at Hanabi as he speaks to her.

"Why?"

Ko-niisan shrugs and releases her. "It's just the sealing ceremony. It will be over in a few minutes, and it's easier if no one else is there."

"Oh," Hanabi thinks about this. "But she's not Hyu-u- Branch House."

"She married my father, didn't she?"

And does this change your family? Your mother, your father, your sister- did it change that? Ko-niisan must see some of her thoughts she's not saying because he continues, in lecturing tones, "When a woman marries, she joins her husband's family. So, even if there's no bloodlimit, Yumito-san needs the seal, just like everyone else."

"But why haven't I seen this before? You're just making that up, aren't you!?"

To her lasting indignation, Ko-niisan just reaches out and musses hair, uncaring of either her accusation or superior rank. "Most clan members are not allowed to marry outside of the clan," he taps his temple to explain. "Got to keep it in the family, you know?"

At forty-eight, it would be, if not impossible, highly unlikely her great uncle had any more children. Ko-niisan is nearly an adult after all, seventeen now, ready to one day take over as his family's provider and heir to his branch of the family. And, since he's a man, her uncle is bringing a family member into the fold, not escaping out. Hanabi cocks her head at a sudden thought.

"Do you like your new mother?" It would be awkward to have a life where you were stuck living with, caring for, some old lady you didn't even like. Ko-niisan seems unperturbed by the thought though as he shrugs.

"Father likes her well enough. It's a love match, you know."

Hanabi echoes the words back.

"A love match."

Movement, the other guests stirring, brings their eyes back up to the opening shoji door, and her father, her uncle, and his new wife step out. Bandages are indeed wrapped around the woman's head. They are pristine, as snow-white as the rest of her wedding clothes, and Hanabi wonders if it hurts at all to get a seal.

Watching her father carefully embrace his new family member and shake hands with his brother-in-law, she wonders if that is so rare, a love match. The couple looks so happy she can't quite imagine it not being, but maybe, a small part of her whispers, that is just her being a little girl with little girl daydreams. Her own mother's dead. Her grandmother's dead. Her aunt on her mother's side has been longtime gone and on her father's both the aunt and uncle are gone. What evidence is there either way for her to see about marriage, about love?

A disquieting thought.

"Will you get a love match?" she asks. Ko-niisan shrugs and hops off the ledge.

"Me?" he asks, picking her up. She reaches out, grabs his elbows to steady herself, laughs, and almost misses what he really means to say. "I will, because I plan on being very careful with who I fall in love with."

And before she has a chance to ask more, he's spinning her around and around, feet flying through the air as if she were still four and not ten. But the wind is whipping through her hair and she laughs and laughs, knowing she will be very careful too. She will not fall in love at all.

Four months later, Hanabi returns from a training mission with her father to discover that Hinata has not been careful with whom she falls in love with at all. Or rather, Hanabi returns and finds out exactly six things, the most important of which may or may not be that Hinata has been careless enough to fall in love.

Ko-niisan is waiting for them at the gates, and after he tells them the news, Hanabi will wonder if he asked for that duty, or if he was set it as punishment. The news itself is startling and strange. First, they find that Konoha was attacked and razed to the ground, but somehow no one was killed and the city rebuilt. In the days that follow, the only way she will be able to tell something happened at all is when an alley has been misplaced or forgotten, and her quickest rooftop path to the academy is no longer quite as fast. Second, Konoha also has a new Hokage, as well as new streets. Or a potential new Hokage. People are evasive about this fact and quite frankly the only difference Hanabi thinks it will make to her life is a new head would be on the mountain, but there are no heads there anymore at all. Still, her father's face is grim when he is told this, so Hanabi trains her face to look grim too.

Her sister is in love with that nin who beat up Neji-niisan at the exam, Ko-niisan explains as his narrative begins to weave from the generals to specifics. This is the third fact they find out and is, Hanabi can tell, the heart of the thing, for her, for Father, for Ko-niisan. This is why Ko-niisan is telling the tale and not a higher-up in the clan. Hinata is in love with a not-Hyuuga, the jinchūriki in fact, and everybody heard her loudly proclaim it right before she dived into a fight and nearly ended up dead. Hanabi has never been so embarrassed in her life as when they are told this. Everyone, even their fishmonger; and her fellow students; and nobodies on the street have been aware of her sister's most inner secrets and desires before Hanabi is. This fact walks beside her, another silent companion, as the three Hyuuga make their way back to the house. Everyone else knew first.

When they arrive back, Hinata is already gone. This is the fourth fact. The message she left behind is vague, perhaps even purposely so. Something about that idiot she apparently loves and the Uchiha traitor her father at one point had wanted as an adopted son-in-law, back when the Uchihas were a clan rather than two murderous boys. The note does make a point to tell them they are running low on milk though, and that pre-prepared meals are in the fridge.

Her father's voice is steely as he questions Ko-niisan over and over about the details of what had happened, and gradually it dawns on Hanabi that Hinata may or may not have had permission from any would-be Hokage, and has, in all probability, broken the law. This is the fifth fact.

The last detail they learn seems almost an after thought, spoken right as Ko-niisan is at the door.

Neji-niisan has gone with Hinata.

Of course, of course whispers some part of her brain.

The room she returns to at the Hyuuga complex no longer faces east. Not because the building is any different. Down to the smallest detail it is the same, but Hanabi finds the room that would have been her sister's and instead claims it as her own. She rolls out a futon and cries herself to sleep for no reason she understands, and wakes to find blood on her sheets and that night there is an awkward dinner celebration with all the clan (save two) to honor this disgusting fact.

Adolescence is a twist of hormones. Watching her sister's sidelong glances, and that downward turn of lips when she thinks no one is there, Hanabi cannot find what anyone would see in it, but she nothing if not determined, and takes to spying on Uzumaki's little protégé Konohamaru. She has the time after all. Her cousins are all much older than she (or far too young); she's been left behind again as they scatter in desperate attempts to pull Konohakagure together, and her sister goes with them. The dining room is often unused after her father remarks during one very silent meal that it seemed pointless to eat there if it was for only two people. She begins to see less of him as well.

So it is not so hard, really, to make a haunt of the same café his team likes, to climb trees where she can see into windows, to stand at the back of the same room as Team Ebisu and wait for one of them to turn around and notice she's there.

It takes over two months, and she's beginning to think the little Naruto-wannabe's not much of a ninja, when, waiting for the bill at his favorite ramen restaurant, he calls out to her. He doesn't turn to look at her. A Hyuuga doing that might be looking at you straight out the back of their heads. Anyone else and they just don't think you're worth the time to look at. It makes Hanabi burn.

"How long are you planning on stalking me?" he asks. As she takes the seat across from him, he smirks and adds, "I know I'm irresistible and all, but you're like eight aren't you?"

She glares, but decides rising to the bait is beneath her. She doesn't look eight! Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to notice. Or maybe he does, but he laughs. Hardly the effect she was aiming for.

"Hey, Hyuuga-san," he says. "You making a face? I can't tell; you don't got any pupils."

Blood rushes to her cheeks and she wonders if anyone watching will mistake her for her sister later on.

"I don't know what you mean, Saurtobi-san," she says in her best Second-Daughter-of-the-Main-House voice.

"Suuuure," he says, but, when the bill comes, he sends it back and orders two more bowls. He doesn't even make her pay her half.

Days later she meets Moegi-san and Udon-san and laughs with them at their pompous sensei's ways. Secretly though, she's a little impressed by the man's sheer knowledge and tells Konohamaru-kun that one day when he walks her home. He smiles and agrees and messes up her hair. Waiting at the door, unexpectedly, is Neji-niisan, and for all his joking he can't read Hyuuga facial expressions, Konohamaru-kun seems to realize the man is pissed, because he says his good byes and let's her walk the last block home alone.

"Where have you been?" The question shoots out her cousin's mouth before she even reaches the door.

"With…friends." And she is surprised to realize it's true. She has friends, her own age and not relations. Neji-niisan squints after Konohamaru-kun's darkening figure, and Hanabi waits for him to ask who it is. But instead he turns, jerking his chin to indicate she follow, and walks inside.

"Hinata-sama is on a mission. When she is out of the city, I, Ko-niisan, or Houjirou-niisan will be guarding you."

When Hinata is here- the few times she is here anymore- her cousins lurk like shadows behind her sister, large and menacing even when in no place more threatening than the ramen shack. If anything should happen to Hinata, Hanabi is the default heir. She hates the sound of the words-default heir. They're as ugly as the idea is, as the reality of what could happen is.

But those facts are nothing new. Her father tells her that every time he drags her to a clan ceremony he has to lead. She could be Head one day, so, though Hinata is more valuable than she in this one crucial sense, Hanabi is worth protecting too. That Nejii-niisan is waiting though, means-

"Hinata is on a mission?"

Neji-niisan rolls his eyes. Well, she thinks he does. Konohamaru-kun may have a point about their eyes after all.

"Obviously."

Hanabi bites her lips. Last to know. Again. But-

"Why aren't you with her?"

Since the city was razed almost a year ago, Neji-niisan has managed to get assigned to most of Hinata's missions too. How, since one Byakugan user is enough, she is not sure, but she remembers Ko-niisan recounting how Nejii-niisan's team had been the first to find her sister's almost-dead body. In her mind she cannot picture Hinata looking dead. The best she can manage is seeing her with tubes down her throat, as she had looked in the hospital after that disastrous chuunin exam. She had looked pretty awful then, but she had not looked dead. How Hinata looked almost-dead might be what is driving him so hard.

Neji-niisan doesn't answer her question, so she tries another, more important one.

"Will you have to go with me when I go out then?"

He quirks an eyebrow up at her.

"That's the general idea of bodyguards, yes."

Without thinking, she turns heel and takes off down the hallway, a feeling of now or never electrocuting every limb. Her feet clatter against the wooden floor and then pound against the dirt street outside. Echoing pounds dog her footsteps as her cousin gives chase, but she can hardly hear him over the blood drumming in her ears. Fingers flicker through a series of hand signals so familiar she doesn't think about it, and charka burst though the veins in her temples and over her face. Behind her, exactly as she had pictured him, is Neji-niisan and-

There! A block up and around there corner is-

She turns and collides with his back, his shoulder smacking her jaws together painfully.

"Geez, kid! What do you think- Hanabi-kun? What are you-"

But she doesn't give Konohamaru-kun the chance to finish. She slams her mouth up against his, hitting her jaw again, teeth clashing. He nearly bites her tongue and does manage to push her down. Jolts of pain ring up her forearms as she tries to catch herself, and when she looks up he's wiping his sleeve against his mouth, red dribbling out one side. Not her tongue, but his own cheek then, she surmises.

"What are you doing, you headcase!" he spits out, and he looks ready to keep going, calling her names, but a careless (or deliberate, she will never know for sure) beat of footsteps cut him off, and she feels someone's presence at her back. Neji-niisan's hands reach down to drag her up off the ground and dig in tightly to her shoulder so she can't run off anywhere.

Konohamaru-kun stares at the jounin and then back at her, his eyes flicking over her dismissively.

"Go home Hyuuga-san," he tells her and then takes his own advice and leaves.

Neji-niisan's fingers bite into her shoulder the whole way back, but she hardly notices, too busy tracing her tongue all along the inside of her mouth. So that is what a kiss is. She tires to imagine her sister dead and can't. She tries to imagine what her sister sees in a kiss, in wanting a boy, in dying for such a small thing, and can't see that either. It was mostly teeth and somebody else's spit in her mouth. Days later, she will regret the way none of Team Ebisu acknowledge her on the street, but at this moment all she can feel is triumphant.

So that is a kiss. She won't be missing much at all.

Five months later and she's found another use for her hard-earned spying skills, one just about as useless as the last one was. Just about, Hanabi reminds herself, not as useless. Ko-niisan had said after all, bonding is important. He'd probably even had the training yard in mind when he'd said that too. It's just her cousin probably had pictured Hanabi and her ditzy teammate on the training yard instead in the bushes behind it. That's all.

Hanabi glances back over at her teammate again. Somehow, she'd pictured joining a genin team to be something grown up, something sacred. Hinata and Neji'-niisan's group of friends all seemed so close, and they'd all been teammates together. Ko-niisan's original genin team still went out to eat dinner regularly, as she'd discovered when he'd dragged her with him one night he'd pulled guard duty. It just didn't seem fair she should get stuck with…well, someone who would drag her outside with the August heat radiating down in waves. But when Hanabi'd complained about teams and rotten luck, Hinata had laughed and said different personalities took a lot of getting use to. And Ko-niisan had bonding is important.

What Neji-niisan, who did have two of the strangest teammates next to her own, might have said Hanabi did not know. She hasn't seen him since that first, embarrassing night of guard duty. Well, she'd seen him, but only at family functions or as she is seeing him now- undercover and at a distance of about twenty feet. Rinko-san has a crush on him- a horrible, overblown, starry-eyed, vomit-inducing crush on him. In fact, both of her new teammates have crushes, something she'd found out on that first day they'd introduced themselves, and both on someone from her family, a cousin and sister respectively. And thus began the era of stalking. Spending time together is bonding, Hanabi reminds herself again and if she still isn't quite sure what use stalking is, she just points out to herself again that when she was spying on Team Ebisu they hadn't hated her and now they did. That just went to show.

"Rinko-san! Quit sighing!"

Hanabi glances away from the fight taking place on the training yard, and turns instead to check on the object of Rinko-san's affections, Neji-niisan. It is only luck that had Hinata on the training field, fighting some kunoichi with a lot of weapons. If it had been Neji-niisan, he would have seen them already, and then there would have been questions. Hearing them is still a distinct possibility, if Rinko-san can't bother to shut up. Hinata has her bloodlimit working hard. She's already seen them lurking here, no doubt, but at least she is too polite to ask any awkward questions about said spying. A promise to teammates to take their secrets of "burning loves" to the grave meant lies would be necessary, if any of this came up in conversation. Except, how could one lie to one's sister?

Rinko-san's response to her worries is to shove Hanabi's shoulder, sending her toppling into the brush. She manages to right herself, but not before startling several birds from their roosts.

"They're going to find us!" she hisses. She leaves the rest of her thought- and then I will die from embarrassment- out of it. Rinko-san merely waves away her objections.

"Like he would even notice us with her around. It's really too bad Hiro-kun's such a dweeb, otherwise maybe he could take your sister away and leave the man-steak to me!"

Her teammate's slangy language still takes her off guard, so it take her a full minute to shake off the disturbing mental image, and by the time she does understand, it seems too awkward a subject to comment on. Beyond the posturing in her teammate's whining, there is something else there, something implied that she'd never considered, at least not consciously. There was something she'd not really seen, Hyuuga eyes be damned. But this girl standing next to her sees something, so Hanabi looks again.

Neji-niisan looks no different than always. Though, she realizes uneasily, he is always looking in his sister's direction. Memory is filled with him always at the back of the room staring through to her family, to her sister, with intense, hateful stares. The look now is not so hard, nor so intense, but his eyes never leave her sister's form. Not when his teammate, the girl, crumples to the ground after a lucky hit Hinata manages to pull off. Not when the abrupt end to the fight surprises Rinko-san so much she jumps and sends more birds flying into the sky. And most definitely not when Hinata finishing checking on her opponent and looks up to smile at him. Most definitely not then.

The smile her sister gives him, reassuringly, is the same one she gives Hanabi too. But, while Neji-niisan's are not any more eyes of someone who wants to kill, it is an uneasy gaze to Hanabi's mind all the same.

Her sister turns away and Neji-niisan's expression blankens, Hyuuga eyes, as always, hard to read. But if she had to put a name to it, a word, she would have called his look sad. She might even, have called it caged, have called it broken.

Bonding is important, sure. She is in these bushes risking death by embarrassment, and all for the sake of bonding. But what kind of bond is that, that she is witnessing on the field?

An answer is humming along her skin, is jumping to take flight like the birds in the bushes with her, but Hanabi turns away, chooses not to see.

Instead, she tells Rinko-san this is all very dumb and that she will see her tomorrow when their team meets for training. She walks back home alone, ignores welcoming calls when she reaches the Hyuuga compound, and walks straight to her room. Flat on her back, she stares up at the ceiling and, charka-fueling her, she stares up at the ceiling and beyond the ceiling, for a long, long time.

The room is stuffy with the heat and doors shut tight. Sweat coats her face, but she does not move. She stares beyond the ceiling and below the floor and out past the walls into the charka-bright pulses of people, but not to the training field, not so far as that. Her range doesn't reach that far and for once she is not sorry. She doesn't move, in fact, until Ko-niisan pushes open the door several hours later and reminds her "Hiashi-sama" wants to have dinner in their dining room. Her presence is requested. It is the first time in months to have a meal as a family, even if the Hokage as their dinner guest is the real reason for this change of pace. But instead of being able to enjoy this return to normalcy that has been missing for almost a year, Hanabi feels sick at the thought of food, her stomach full with a secret swallowed whole.

She chooses not to say. She chooses not to see.

Charka-veins flatten around her eyes, and she is looking only at the ceiling once again. The Byakugan aches from long use. Soundlessly. she follows her cousin out.

This dinner party sucks. It might even be more miserable than the one from two years ago, right after she found out certain things about her cousin. At fourteen, it just isn't fair. This celebration should be for her, should be for her team. Instead, it's for Sarutobi Konohamaru (Sarutobi-san now), the only leaf-nin to make chuunin this exam. First, she had to miss the first exam she was eligible for because it was in Hidden Cloud of all places, and now she loses out in this exam to a loud-mouthed, free-spirited idiot like him? What is it people are always saying? Life is not fair. Not even a little bit.

Well. It's not like even if she won new ranking anyone would be around to celebrate. Hinata has harried off on some long-term mission that has turned even more long-term than her father is comfortable with, and he is always saying that a real mission would toughen her older sister up. Neji-niisan went with Hinata, nearly three months ago, a fact that seems to comfort other Hyuuga, but makes the hair on the back of Hanabi's neck stand up. He's never done anything, probably never will. Still, first with that near death-match the two had at their chuunin exam and then with Hinata's kamikaze fight with Pein? The important events in Hinata's life always seem to happen when Hanabi can't be there to watch, to make sure things will be okay.

Ko-niisan nudges her arm, and Hanabi makes a mental amendment to her earlier thoughts. Not everyone is gone. Her father had been ready to watch her final round, had she gotten that far, and Ko-niisan has been present the entire time too, more constantly beside her than her shadow, except for when actually participating in the tests. They would have been proud enough for the whole clan had she given them the chance to be proud. Her team too is here, though how much of a pleasure that is, is debatable. They hadn't stopped swapping spit all night. Hanabi finds it rather perverse that anything should make her miss those good, old-fashioned days of stalking. As annoying as their crushes had been, at least Hanabi had not been held unwilling hostage to all the revolting displays of affection she is now that the two are "dating."

"You still with us, Hanabi-chan?" Ko-niisan asks, and she gives him a grim smile in return.

"Of course."

"Of course," he repeats in lightly teasing tones.

"You were here," he gestures to the whirl of conversation and food orbiting around them, before reaching out to flick her temples. "Just not here."

"Ooow," she whines, sticking her lip out exaggeratedly, making a show at being hurt. "What'd you do that for?"

But it is no good, she's laughing now too, along with him. Ko-niisan is always so mean! But he makes her smile, so she'll forgive him this time. He reaches out, sensing her mind is once again beginning to wander, and ruffles her hair.

"Guess I can't blame you," he says. "When you have all this scintillating wit and conversation about."

They both glance around, and Hanabi winces a little at the mess. Half-eaten plates are piled around deserted tables and chairs, and if she's not mistaken, someone has introduced a bottle of some local, alcoholic drink to the mix. Leaf's newest chuunin seems to be coming on strongly, even for him. His arm is strung around Moegi-san's neck, and he's laughing too loudly at things she's not sure are meant to be jokes. Beside her, Ko-niisan stretches, his chair scrapping against the floor as he pushes back.

"C'mon, let's head out. Nothing of any worth's going to be happening around here tonight. Go and grab your teammates. I don't feel comfortable just leaving them. Besides," he adds, winking. "They probably should come up for air every once in a awhile, right?"

A small burst of laughter escapes her, making her hitai-ite bounce against her chest where it hangs. Slowly she begins to make her way across the room, pushing back bodies to squirm through.

"Come on," she yells to her team. Getting no response from the lovesick duo, she runs her hands through her hair, a childhood habit she still hasn't managed to break free of. Pulling on Hiro-kun's shoulder, she tries again.

"Guys, come on! You can get back to locking lips at the hotel!" An utter lie; Genma-sensei's sort of strict about the no-boys-in-the-girls'-room-or-tent thing. Hiro-kun knows it too, as he reaches out to bat her hand away. Beyond them, somewhere in the room, someone, seemingly tone-deaf, has gotten a hold of a shamisen. Hanabi grits her teeth.

"Hiro-kun! Rinko! Quit being disgusting and get out of those seats and get moving now! You've already made enough of idiots of yourselves to-"

A hand yanks her backward mid-sentence, spinning her around so she comes face to chest with someone. She whips back, but the hand reaches out to clip her chin, forcing her gaze upward. Konohamaru-kun has grown in the last two years since she was anywhere close to him. His hands, she realizes uncomfortably, have grown too; are now large, almost strangely over sized compared to his tall-but-still-spindly frame. She takes a step back, but bumps into Hiro-kun and Rinko's table, spilling their drinks.

"They're in love; that's what they dooo. Got summin' against kissin' Ha-na-bi-chaan?" Konohamaru-kun leans over her, his hand coming to rest on the table behind her.

He smiles.

And then he kisses her.

It tastes bitter, and yeasty, and his mouth is pushing against hers so hard it's making her jaw sore. Somewhere beyond her, Hiro-kun is yelling something and there's a crashing sound. Fingers climb up her arm, clawing in, keeping her still, and she's trying to wrestle her arm out from between them and -

Air! Hanabi sucks in several gasping breaths, not caring for second why the horrible thing has ended, only that there is air. Looking up, Ko-niisan's prying Konohamaru-kun off her, pushing him away, and sending him stumbling into the next table. She glares at him, and hopes the burning sensation in her eyes are not tears forming. She wants to be anything but weak. A quick step forward, and her hand connects across his face with a satisfying crack.

His teammates materialize from the crowd and Moegi-san reaches down to help him up. Dimly, Hanabi is aware that other conversations have died out, and even the shamisen noise is gone. Konohamaru-kun puts a steadying hand on his teammate's shoulder and then, taking a step forward, is standing on his own. He reaches a hand up to experimentally move his jaw back and forth- checking the damage she supposes. Behind her, her teammates scoot forward so that they have her back. Beside her, Ko-niisan does not move, but she can feel from his hand on her shoulder that he's shifted his weight forward, ready to spring at any slightest provocation.

"Shit, Hyuuga," Konohamaru-kun says. "I didnn'it to that to you when you kissed me."

Hanabi feels herself go white and clenches her jaw.

"Well maybe you should have," she says, and turns, back painfully straight, and leaves. Noise rushes to fill in the empty air. The crowd parts before her and must be closing behind her, swallowing her up. It must be, because it takes so long for anybody to catch up to her. And when somebody does it is not, as she would have guessed had she been in any state to play guessing games, Konohamaru-kun, following to hit her back. Nor is it Rinko with offers of chocolate and sympathy, nor Hiro-kun swearing up a storm and inventing reassuringly ridiculous names to call everybody and anybody who is making his teammate upset.

It is Ko-niisan's hand that reaches out to grab her shoulder, and his hand that slides down her arm, as much a motion of comfort, as one to stop her and to keep her from moving on.

"Are you all right?"

At that she thinks back over it all and her hearts breaks, is shattered at that fact someone played with her and had used her in such a way. As if she were a thing. Was this what Konohamaru-kun felt then, those two years ago?

She looks back at Ko-niisan, his face awash in moonlight, his eyes almost readable, almost expressive as far as Hyuuga go.

"Boys are stupid," she says. Tension seeps out his shoulders and a look of what might almost be called relief breaks over his face.

"Yes, we kind of are," he says, and she is in his arms, messing up his shirt as she cries huge, loud, snotty, and wet into him. And when it is all out of her, and her head hurts from sobbing, and her skin tingles from the drying paths of salt and tears, they begin walking again. His arms don't move from around her and selfishly, she allows herself to feel ten again, to feel four again, well protected from anything that hurts her. Ko-niisan doesn't let go, in fact, until she is in her room. Then, after turning out the lights on her, and only then, does he go to report to her father and Genma-sensei.

They are just a room a way, light seeping in from under the crack of the door. She listens in, paying no attention to the words, but letting their voices wash over her. You are very dumb, she thinks to herself. You have no right to feel so hurt. She tells herself this again and again, until the murmur of voices from the next room fade and eventually she sleeps.

The next morning no word of the incident is mentioned. Only her father says anything at all, and even then he might have been talking about something else entirely when he tells her, "I am glad Ko-kun is with you. He is a much better bodyguard than Neji is. I can trust him."

And when she doesn't understand, she doesn't say so, because at any rate, she is glad he is there too.

Neji-niisan and Hinata are not there when she, Ko-niisan, her father, and all the others who left for exams come back home. Life falls into its usual routines and she forgets- not the humiliation and not the comfort of what she realizes now are friends- but the unease she got from that stray comment her father said. Three more months pass, her sister's room still empty except for once a week when she goes in to dust it. She wonders if anyone does the same for her cousin's room. Someone must surely, for she's entered it once since their absence. Her eyes ached from the extended use of her Byakugan, for she had it working the entire time she was in the room- over two hours in total- as she searched papers and boxes and looked for loose floor boards. Really, Neji-niisan did not own much. Not enough to take up two hours of snooping, but she wanted proof for something she was not even sure she could name.

Did Neji-nii-no, Neji -in just this one way she wants to deny any connection at all- did he look at her sister the way she thought he did? Would her sister ever see that? What of her sister's confession to Uzumaki? What traces, what actions are still linked to that moment Hanabi missed? She found spare clothes and bandages, a few weapons (but not many; he is on a mission). On the desk were three photos, one of his team, one his parents' wedding, and one taken at a festival of some sort. The people in that one wore the younger faces of those she missed. She found a packet of letters from her uncle to her aunt, a scroll on seals, and a box. In the box was a postcard, a seashell, several informal snapshots of people laughing all taken from the same day, and a piece of paper with some poetry scrawled on. Valuable to the owner, she'd thought, but nothing there had been anything she could have made any sense of. Nothing there said anything at all to her of her questions, not even the least important question of who was cleaning the room. So Hanabi had replaced everything just so and never returned.

She is, unsurprisingly with her luck, in the furo when word comes they have returned. Scrambling to finish, still-wet hair is plastered to her cheek when she bursts into her father's study and catapults herself into her sister, sending them both crashing into Neji. Miraculously, even this surprise does not catch him off guard too badly. He stumbles, but keeps all of them from falling.

Neji smiles at her and her antics, which makes Hanabi uncomfortable, so instead she turns and smiles at her sister.

"You're back!" she cries, not caring how obvious that fact already is. Hinata gives her an extra squeeze then releases her.

"Yes, and a nice welcome home too!"

Behind the girls, their father sighs. His face, at least, is easy enough to ready, though Hanabi wonders if that is long familiarity as much as anything else.

"Hanabi, you are old enough to know better. Go wait outside till the briefing is done."

It is more lenient than he might normally be, but he is not looking at Hanabi when he says this; his eyes, like his mind, are on the two who have just returned. She follows orders and stations herself out in the hall. When the trio exits a full hour later, Hanabi notices something. Her sister bows to her father as she turns to leave, but not too deeply and not shaking as she use to do. She rises on tiptoes next and brushes her lips against his cheek, something never done before to Hanabi's memory. As Hinata does so, her own cheeks are tinted red, but she is not stammering when she murmurs, "Thank you Father. Your approval means much to me."

She walks away, seemingly not seeing Hanabi peering out around the corner, and her hips sway in a way quite different from the Hinata of two years ago, or even from the Hinata of six months earlier, right before their mission took place. From behind them, Neji emerges, and her father gives him a knowing stare.

"Neji," he calls out to the man trailing after her sister. "You too, did well, even if -"

The rest of the sentence hangs in the air, part question, and part resignation to facts of some sort. They are not the words either Neji or Hanabi had been expecting, and a rueful looks crosses her cousin's face.

"Thank you, sir," he says and then disappears down the hall. Her father shuts the door, and Hanabi is once more alone. By the time she finds her sister again, Hinata is collapsed on top of her futon, having not even bothered to shower or change clothes. Hanabi stands by the door, unsure if maybe she shouldn't go in and pull up a blanket around her sister, as Hinata use to do for her when Hanabi was small. In the end though, she leaves the job undone; it has been spitefully hot for autumn and the cold season cannot come too soon.

Instead, she goes into her room and, angling the mirror to show as much of the room as possible, practices her walk. She is so absorbed in analyzing that she doesn't hear any footfalls in the hall, and nearly jumps out of her skin when Ko-niisan opens the door.

Ko-niisan, Houjirou-niisan and Neji are all standing at the door, staring at her in her half-darkened room with her mirror twisted around. Uncomfortably she shifts from foot to foot.

"Hanabi-chan," Ko-niisan says. "We were going to do some sparing if you wanted to watch. Try some, maybe. Ah," he pauses and looks around. "What were you doing?"

"Just-just looking," she says striving for a neutral tone. "Does my walk seem different to you?"

Ko-niisan scans her up and down, giving her an unreadable look. Next to him, Houjirou-niisan and Neji exchange bewildered looks.

"Ah," Neji says, eyebrows furrowed. "No, nothing is different at all."

Hanabi is watching Hinata scratch at the ground. Some things never change, and this ritual between the two has been going on since Hanabi remembers. Hinata is, purportedly, gardening, has been all morning (has been all of Hanabi's remembered life), as the tale-tale dirt beneath fingernails can attest to. And, despite how it looks now, Hanabi knows her sister's efforts eventually always yield a riot of life and growth and blooms. Hanabi herself mostly plays the go-fer, being unable to distinguish weed from the plants re-emerging now that winter is done. The cold frosts have remained till quite late this year, or so Hinata tells her. There is much work to be done, but even discounting the frosts, Hinata has been busy, locked in conference with her father most days. In some ways, Hanabi enjoys this state of affairs. Her sister is home, and so is her father. On the other hand, it means, most assuredly, that Hinata has been chosen to follow her father as heir. Well, Hanabi thinks, there was very little chance of it being any other way, and it is for the best. This way her sister will always be part of the family then, and Hanabi has long ago made up her mind that she always will be too. It is just that it hurts, to be overlooked, for judgment to be passed on you. Of course, she has told no one this, except Rinko on one particularly wet and miserable night away on a mission. Strange how someone becomes something like- a friend, someone connected to her indescribably. Hanabi has a confidante in her now.

"What are you smiling for?" Hinata asks, voice soothing and touched with just the barest bit knowing as well. Hanabi just grins bigger, teasing her with secrets, and shakes her head.

"Hanabi-chan, if you pass-" but her sister's voice trails off, hand still suspended. Whipping her head around, Hanabi catches sight of an orange back and blond head.

"Is that Uzumaki-san?" she asks, pitching her voice low. Hinata gives herself a mental shake, and resumes digging.

"Yes, it is."

What, if anything, Uzumaki has ever said to Hinata, is still unknown to Hanabi. Her sister is a stranger with a familiar face some days, and every day Uzumaki's name is mentioned is one such day. Memories of her sister telling a story, or putting her to bed wind through Hanabi's mind, and Hanabi can't help but wonder, "What is he to you?"

"Who?" Hinata asks, and the stranger that stares out of her eyes is not even blushing.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

"Oh."

Her sister's face is blushing now.

"He is a d-dear friend. He is-s," she pauses here, bringing her fingers together as if to play with them as she did when she was younger, but doesn't, not quite. They remain untouching, motionlessly raised. "H-he is a very inspiring person, someone who will ch-change things."

A picture of Hinata and this man in a house of their own begins to form in Hanabi's head. Not part of her family anymore is a thought echoing in her brain when she asks, "Do you... love... this man?"

Hinata laughs. It is a fragile thing she quickly stops up, and her face is quite red as she scolds, "T-that is quite a personal question, H-hanabi-chan!"

"No one ever tells me anything," she pouts, knowing it makes her sound like a child and not caring, unable for once, to care.

"W-well," Hinata concedes, turning back to her digging. "I m-may have once... had hopes. But things are different now."

A smile flickers along Hinata's face, letting Hanabi know that different is not...not-okay, not bad. Though, how anyone could turn down someone as nice as her sister, Hanabi will never know. Maybe it is not fair or objective, but she doesn't have to be fair or objective about the person who let her sleep with her when it thundered or took care of her when she was sad. Her sister deserves more than anyone dumb enough to turn her down, but selfishly, Hanabi is glad Uzumaki is an idiot of the first degree.

"So," Hanabi pauses, unsure how to phrase this. "Why's he here?"

"A curiosity u-unsatisfied and Spy-master Hanabi is not lurking around to find herself an a-answer?"

Hinata is teasing her?

"I-I do not lurk!" she sputters, unable to think of any other response. Hinata raises her head back up, blushing still, but eyes sparkling, confident once more.

"Then, what was with all the spying you always did when you were younger?"

And here she thought Hinata would never stoop so low as to mention such an embarrassing thing! She feels her face heating up and, deciding that feigning ignorance is the best way out of the situation, returns to the matter at hand.

"But what is he doing here?"

"Oh," The smile drops off of Hinata's face as her eyes get a far away look, like she's thinking of something troubling or complicated. Hanabi's charka veins are tinkling in anticipation of use, because if she doesn't get an answer soon, she will resort to spying, being teased or not. But then her sister goes on, "He's probably in talking with Father. Lobbying, you know."

"Lobbying?" she echoes. Hinata nods her head and reaches for a packet of seeds.

"There's a very important proposal going around, that the clans' council will need to vote on soon, and then the council of elders and the daimyo, if the clans approve. But it is... rather controversial."

Hanabi stares expectantly, and seeing her look, her sister quirks a half-grin at her and goes on.

"You see, awhile back, when Pein was attacking and then... everything with Uchiha," Hinata waves her hands vaguely, as though Hanabi might look over, see some reports on the subject, and read up on it. But of course, Hanabi has very little idea of what "everything" is, or even much about Pein's attack. Probably less than Hinata realizes; when at the center of everything, it must be hard to imagine what the outskirts look like.

"There were a lot of very dangerous politics coming into play. Danzou-"

"The man who went to the Kage summit?" Hanabi questions.

"Yes, him. He had a secret organization called ROOT that did a lot of very bad things, and some people from ROOT wanted to tell us about it, but couldn't. They had seals on their tongues. Now that things are a little... calmer, the Hokage is working to fix a lot that really hurt the Leaf in these recent battles, and N-naruto-kun and Sakura-san both are helping a lot."

Hanabi decides to let that last bit go uncommented on, but really, what a powerful group. Out of the nine students her sister graduated with, one was or is, an entire clan, however disgraced; four more, including her sister, are heirs to clans; one had come into prominence as some sort of highly-valued strategist; and these other two Hinata just mentioned, who were both from families of no account at all, were now key political players. The thought is at once both scary and exciting, making her believe that change is riding on the backs of her generation.

"So what do they want to change now?"

"They want... to outlaw seals on people." Hinata leaves it at that, but really no more explanation is needed. Seals are highly used, even in ordinary shinobi lives. The Godaime famously had one for regeneration, and saved many lives with it. Others keep extra charka stored in them, and rumor has it seals are what keep the demon housed within the man that had moments ago walked by them. But in the eyes of the Hyuuga, all that is unimportant.

A seal, Hanabi thinks, changes everything.

She tries not to picture her-great aunt, Ko-niisan's stepmother, nor any of the other countless sealings she's seen when she asks her next question.

"What does father think?"

The bandages around her great aunt's head had been as crisp and white as the rest of her bridal clothes, and inexplicably, Hanabi's heart is beating fast at that thought. Hinata, she worries, will not answer. And does she want her to? Really?

"The seal does have advantages," she says. The voice is monotone, carefully neutral, though Hanabi can detect the worry in it. Trouble is, she can't tell which outcome would worry her sister more. "An unsealed person can have their eyes harvested. I was kidnapped for that once."

Hanabi nods. No one ever says much about that incident, but some days she wonders if Hinata herself thinks about it much. She suspects she does.

"What the seal does is now fairly- well-known. Hyuuga are not as likely to be targeted and killed for their eyes. But..."

Hinata trails off, and later Hanabi will wonder if it was because her sister knew Hanabi understood what was being left unsaid, or if it was because Neji was walking up behind her.

"Hinata," he says, and absently Hanabi notes the lack of title. "Your father requests your presence in his study."

That familiar, small smile that had been so often on her sister's face of late touches her lips again. Neji waits, unmoving behind her.

"I'm coming."

Left alone, Hanabi gazes at the scattering of tools and briefly considers leaving them strewn about. But with the impending clouds, she decides that leaving her sister's tools to rust is maybe just a touch too petulant. She did, after all, get some answers. At dinner, a surprise-affair requiring the whole clan attend, she will wish she had left every last one them not only out, but drowning, submerged, in water. She will wish those tools were rusted and rotted and broken. She will wish she smashed them herself.

"I wish to announce I will be gaining an adopted son-in-law soon," her father tells them. "Neji and my daughter, Hinata, are to be wed. From them and their own, may the Hyuuga be strengthened in blood, and well-guided in life."

Not all things then, will change, not with them, not their generation. She understands at this moment with perfect clarity. Seals or not, something will always be there to cage you. And if she cannot lie and say she missed seeing their two hands reaching for one another, neither will she lie and admit love is anything but a seal no one can see with human eyes.

"They reallt seem to love each other, don't they?" Nara Yoshino says as she hands Hanabi the portrait of her sister in her bridal clothes. Her hands still stink of developing chemicals, Hanabi absently notes, and wonders how much her father paid to get these photographs printed so quickly. She doesn't know why he bothered. It is not like Neji and Hinata will not be married be married tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

These sorts of things are forever after all.

"Hmmm," Ko-niisan agrees peering over Hanabi's shoulder to look down at Hinata. Hinata's face is turned slightly away from the camera, gaze not quite meeting the lens' eye. In the grey shades, you cannot tell how white the bridal cape gleamed over her sister's elaborately styled hair, how red her lips had been painted, or how, in typical Hinata fashion, she had been blushing so hard you could see it even though the make-up she'd worn. Really, the one thing the camera truly caught, just as Hanabi remembers from that day, is Hinata's smile. It is small, but indelibly there, shining to light up her whole face. She is proud of how beautiful a bride her sister was, it was the one truly good thing about that day and Hanabi had helped to dress her. It was the smile that made her beautiful though, and Hanabi is honest enough with herself to admit she isn't sure how she feels about that.

A smile has come to live in Hanabi's house and on her sister's face since the wedding. Hinata hums as she gardens and as she does the clan books. What scares Hanabi is that, while she knows where this smile comes from, she cannot quite divine the whys or whens.

"It seems that way, doesn't it Nara-san?" Hanabi agrees too, and if there is sarcasm in her voice, just a bit, she can't help that. She watches as Nara-san carefully slides the photographs into a bag, and then takes the handle from her, swinging it carelessly down by her side. She waits at door while Ko-niisan hands the photographer the money she is owed. When he turns to follow her out, she already several paces ahead of him, walking at a cracking pace. he huffs along those few steps behind her for several blocks before yanking her backward and into a side street, a tight grip on her arm.

"Let's go this way," he says. Hanabi wiggles, trying to break free, but he's not breaking his hold.

"Let go," she commands. Heat barrels down to her stomach. Why's he hurting her? What did she do?

"I'm Main House," she threatens, his non-responses setting her nerves tingling, a panic setting her on edge. She doesn't get why he's mad. She doesn't even get why he's been following her anymore! The heir is married! The line will continue! The spare daughter isn't needed anymore! "You don't get to treat me like this!"

And as she says this, he throws her free, so she goes skidding into dirt. Throwing her hands up, she manages to make sure the pictures aren't crushed.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" she asks, really angry now. Her father would not be pleased with them if these had been crushed. More specifically, he would not have been with her.

"What are you doing?" Ko-niisan spits back at her and with a shock she realizes he is truly angry. At her. Her cheeks go cold at the realization and her knees burn from sliding across the ground. She reaches down awkwardly to dust them off, eyes never leaving his, even as she moves. She wants him to know she is listening.

She is waiting for him to ask in a way she'll understand. He sighs and the anger seems to flood out, leaving him with sagging shoulders and tired face.

"You know, for fifteen years old, you sure can be a brat- oh, and while we're on that, I don't care if you are Main House; I'm still your elder."

Hanabi sniffs. She will not cry at something so small as being told off, even if it is from someone she never thought would hurt her, even if she deserves it. Which she doesn't.

"You got mad first."

Ko-niisan rubs his eyes.

"That's not why I brought you this way. We need to talk. You can't go on like this."

"Like what?"

"Pouting, being mouthy to complete strangers, just 'cause you're mad your sister got married. She happy! You should be happy for her."

"I am happy for her," Hanabi's voice is very small as she says this. I am, she thinks, aren't I?

No.

Happy is maybe not the right word.

Ko-niisan collapses down to sit, back against a wall. His entire frame radiates a sense of failure. Guilty, Hanabi tries to explain, not even quite sure what it is she is working to defend herself against.

"It's just- there's all this space between us now. It's like I'm walking around trying to figure out this stranger. When did it all happen? Why Neji?" she pauses, feeling small and overlooked and yet, at the same time, so exposed and with a million eyes upon her, wondering how to toy with this weakness they see.

"Why... didn't she tell me?" Doesn't she love me? She does not say this last part aloud. Either answer Ko-niisan could give would not be enough. Either answer Hinata could give would not be enough.

Of all the people in Hinata's life, only Neji would probably know the truth. Hinata is too close to her own heart to see it truthfully. She is always too close to the center to know what things look like farther out.

Ko-niisan gives out a little sigh, so light that it might almost be a little laugh. A very little, very brittle laugh.

"For Neji? It probably happened right from the moment he saw her, if that story he told Uzumaki was true at all. All that stuff with his father just confused him as to what he was feeling for a while, that's all. But for Hinata-sama?...That's harder to say. Very gradually, most likely, though I suspect it all came to head with that long mission they had last summer."

In fact, that laugh sounded so brittle that it makes Hanabi wonder, and so she sits too, hugs her knees, and makes herself as unassuming as possible, so her next question will seem less like prying than what it is.

"Ko-niisan... do you love Hinata?"

He stares at her, and laughs again. But this laugh is belly deep and low. His face twists into some sort of a smile as he looks at her.

"No. Definitely not."

"Good," she says and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

"Can we go now?"

Ko-niisan sighs again, but this time the sigh sounds more like a sigh should.

"No. I need you to promise to at least try and be happy for your sister. Failing that, at least acting like you are trying to be happy for you sister. This bratty meanness isn't you, Hanabi-chan."

Hanabi gets up, dusts herself lightly, and walks a few paces before turning back to her older cousin.

"I suppose, I could try."

"That's all I ask," he says, getting up and reaching for the bag.

"Hey," he says, elbowing her in the gut. "You really wanted to use the seal on me a moment ago, didn't you?"

Her mouth hangs slightly open at that. Ko-niisan's jokes are often very dry, very blunt and usually make her just a bit uncomfortable, something that is not always a deliberate side effect. Still, as she follows along behind him, she can't shake out the inappropriateness of that joke, made only slightly less hurtful by the fact that both know she never would, and by the fact that, well... Hanabi doesn't know the dreaded hand signs to active the seal. Someday, she will not be Main House, or so people think. Unless you are special, like Hinata, and have the groom adopted into your family because you are heir, things change. You leave your home. You leave your family. Eventually, anyway, because Young Women Marry. It is what they do. And this is what everyone expects Hanabi to do. She won't of course. Her sister-the-stranger might be happy with love, but Hanabi hasn't seen her secret and can't find how it came to make her happy. To Hanabi, there is no use, no glory in love. But someday, everybody think, all the same.

"Ko-niisan asked for you."

Hinata's voice is soft and low, but carries well enough for Hanabi to hear it, and so she pushes heavy hair out of her eyes and looks up from her report. A moment later there's a soft thump as the door slides open, wood knocking against wood. Standing in the doorframe is her sister, who looks like a stranger again. But Hanabi smiles; it is a stranger she knows. Part of her resents how these important things seem to happen when she is away, but it was, Hanabi glows at the thought of its success, a seven-month, deep-cover spying stint. A-rank- her very first A-rank. Things were bound to change at home, and this particular change in the way Hinata's walk has taken on a bow-legged quality and the way her center of gravity is shifting down, is not such a surprising change after all. It has been three years. Hanabi cannot forever be Hinata's de-facto heir; the line must continue on.

"Hanabi," Hinata repeats. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, but I'll go talk to him after I get this done."

She runs her hand through her hair again. Really, she only has two hands, however skilled they are. It's a little hard to go make visits to all the family members and get reports done at the same time. Ko-niisan will just have to wait to visit.

"I meant he asked for you."

Hanabi blinks up owlishly. Yes, and she'd said she would see him. It's Hinata who's not listening. But Hinata just shakes her head, obviously thinking the same of Hanabi as Hanabi is thinking of her, and says, "Walk with me. Your report can wait awhile."

It cannot. She wants to get another one just like it and to do that she has to do perfectly on all aspects of this mission. But who is head will officially change after the baby is born, so Hanabi follows without grousing too much.

Unsurprisingly, Hinata leads her to the gardens and then to a low bench that rests up against a mostly unused dojo. The flowers sprawl somewhat wildly here, never quite tamed, and Hinata knows it is her sister's favorite spot just for that reason. Her skin prickles, realizing Hinata is trying, in her own way, to do things to put Hanabi at her ease.

"Ko-niisan-"

"I know. I heard you. And I told you, I'll go visit people later. Tomorrow."

She beginning to feel a little prickly about all this and wishes suddenly they'd lit the lanterns that hang on the dojo porch. It is too dark to clearly see her sister's face.

"No, that's fine. I-i-i am trying to say something else," her sister's stutter flickers into her words and back out. Hanabi chooses not to make a sound, just let the words and the childish, tale-tale stutter continue.

"I was asked into Father's study this evening. I-I am often there now, for...y-you know. But K-k-ko-niisan was there to ask something of Father. For you. F-for marriage."

"W-what?"

She wonders if maybe she fell asleep, and she will wake to find her report still unfinished and perhaps a little smudged from where her head had rested, but otherwise everything unchanged. But no. She is living in a changed world. For a while they sit there, the words creating a canyon between them and eventually, Hanabi finds herself saying, "I should probably go talk to him, huh?"

Hinata doesn't reply till Hanabi has almost turned the corner back to the compound when her voice trails up from behind.

"Father told him, we cannot read your heart, anymore than you could ours. He laughed, " she pauses, unsure if she is being clear on this point. "At that, I mean. Like he found it a funny thing to say."

She waits, but Hinata says no more.

It is not so hard to find her great-uncle's house, and she is quietly admitted in. Her great-aunt smiles and offers tea with such a genuine smile Hanabi becomes certain only her own father, sister and Ko-niisan know what was said behind close doors.

"Is Ko-niisan here, please?" she asks, hands brushing against her sides in an attempt to push back the awkwardness of coming into this home uninvited and unexpected. But before her aunt can answer, she finds out for herself.

"You've grown a little bit," says a familiar voice. It is tempting to try to sneak a peek, but using Byakugan in a Hyuuga home is considered quite rude, and he'd probably be able to tell what she'd done regardless. "It's nice out. Do you want to sit on the egawa?"

Lanterns are lit on this egawa, and Hanabi has no trouble seeing his face. It is harder, in fac,t to see the lighting bugs in the distance. She looks his face over, trying to see what changes might be there, and finds none. She has no idea why he would have done what he did.

"My father is pushing me to marry," he says, and panicked, Hanabi jerks back, cheeks reddening.

"Did I say that out loud?"

"Um, no," he chuckles and Hanabi suddenly sees the face of someone she knows, quite familiar, who will tell her things she doesn't want to hear, will protect her when she wants it, and who is not afraid to call her on her bullshit too. She breathes and realizes she hadn't even realized her shoulders were tense till now that they were relaxing. "I just thought... you're pretty young still and this," he gestures to the space between them, "Is pretty sudden. I thought you might want to know why."

"Ah," she nods her head.

"Father wants an heir, to make sure the line continues."

"Ah," she says again. They sit for several moments before Hanabi figures out the words to what she wants to ask.

"Do you remember your father's wedding? What you told me then?"

"I do love you, you know."

And Hanabi waits, because that is not an answer, not enough of one. She doesn't know what an answer is, but senses there is something that has not been said.

"Do you?" she asks eventually, when he does not seem likely to say anymore.

"I don't know if I am in love with you though," and that is what she was waiting to hear. She wonders if it true."I could learn to be though, I think."

This is not, as far as she understands, the most romantic thing that could have been said. Then again, what she knows of romance and love are what Rinko tells her about the trashy books she likes to read and two equally awful kisses with Konohamaru-kun, whom she has not spoken to in years. She remembers the feel of both kisses well though, and she thinks about what she sees when she sees Hinata's small smiles, and she thinks about her great aunt, and her wedding cloths, and about the tea she had offered. She stretches her fingers. And thinks of Ko-niisan's arms that have made her feel safe, and way he laughs at her jokes and knows her well enough to make jokes about Hanabi's great weaknesses and fears. She thinks about the way she stings when she hears those, but also of the way, those weaknesses don't seem so great and those fears so fearsome when he talks of them. She looks across the way to see the flickering of lanterns at the Main House compound and she thinks about those too.

"The Great Seal Debate," she says, calling the legislature by the nickname the papers coined. "How's it going? I didn't keep up with things when I was away."

"Still going. No consensus one way or another."

His tone is flat as he replies. Hanabi is not surprised by the answer, it had been thrown back and forth for several years without anything ever being done. It is, in the end, the smaller part of everything, smaller than she thought such a thing could be at ten. At eighteen, she knows she not particularly good with people, but that she longs for them and here is one person reaching out. In the right way though? part of her argues. Is there a right way? Or are we both just holding back?

She couldn't tell. She knows he is there for her, and that he makes her grow. She knows she can make him laugh and that she knows all his favorite things.

"I'm sorry I can't give you a better answer than that."

Hanabi startles at sound of his voice, and when she looks up he looking at her, really looking at her, and she knows before he does what he is about to say. "You don't have to let me know right away. Give it a few days."

Hanabi nods and watches him walk back inside. Behind the door, she can hear her great aunt's questioning tone and her step-son's muted reply, but can make out no words. Slowly she stands up and begins walking back into the night. A slow smile breaks out as a sureness washes over her. Some things change from when you are ten and something don't.

Hanabi knows what she will say.


	4. Blinding Ourselves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neji considers what we cannot see- and will not see- the day Hanabi gets the biggest mission of her career yet.

“All I see is you.”

This is, Neji reflects, both literally and metaphorically true, but not, perhaps, the time to mention that to Hinata, though she had asked. Because just then, Hanabi’s voice breaks through from nowhere. He jerks his head, alertness strained to its very edges at this sound without a source, something not even his Byakugan can find. But that’s the point of their little exercise, he reminds himself. It’s why Hanabi drug the two of them out here with her.

“You can’t see me, then?” Hanabi’s voice, reedier than her sister’s, rises in excitement. She’s behind Hinata, somewhere low, Neji decides. Maybe in the bushes twenty paces away, or maybe slightly further to the left, behind a tree.

“You can come out now,” he says. “We’re all suitably impressed.”

Giggling, but no girl, appears, and Hinata is no help at all, bringing a hand up to hide a smile. Neji sighs and let’s them have their fun at his expense. Giving up on finding his younger cousin, he lets his Byakugan fade. Hanabi… Hanabi has always been a puzzle to him, more so as they’ve grown older. She’d stopped addressing him with any honorfics years ago, and while Hinata claimed to the contrary, he’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen her at any family dinner since New Year’s. She is not important, particularly, to him, except in the ways that she is important to Hinata, and there are so many other things, other problems, that eat up his day. Just a phase, Hinata had told him. Hinata’s sister’s apparent distaste for him was just a phase. A nice platitude of course, but he had seen the way Hinata’s nose scrunched as she said that, not sure of her own words. And anyway, Neji isn’t stupid. All it takes is some basic math skills to figure out what has his younger cousin so on edge. Three years ago he married her sister.

If they hadn’t always competed, however unconsciously, for Hinata’s attention, they might have gotten along perfectly. Funny to think that, but even now he finds himself looking over to Hinata, trying to catch her eye, see if her attention is on him or focused on finding the girl spying on them.

His wife’s face is soft, lips bit to keep from smiling too big at her sister’s actions, but the emotion gets shuttered away when she sees him watching. It melts into a softer, more settled look, and she reaches down, brushing across her chest and stomach before signaling for one more moment.

“You’re not the only one with secrets, Hanabi-chan,” she says. “So hurry up and get out here. How did you hide from us? Is that what your big surprise is?”

The brush stirs in a loud, deliberate way, and Neji is pleased to see his first guess, done even without Byakugan, was right. Hanabi had hidden in the bushes exactly twenty paces away.

“My commander was very impressed,” Hanabi says. Her face has a cat who ate the canary look to it, but this statement doesn’t get the reaction Neji’s sure she wants. Hinata looks at her passively, unsurprised, and seemingly unmoved.

“Yes, I thought he must be, though I didn’t know what, exactly, you had impressed him with till until just now. The Anbu offices sent me something. They want you for a spying mission.”

Hanabi wrinkles her nose. “Why’d you find that out before me? Its my mission.”

Hinata sighs and though he can see her fingers twitch in that old way they once did, he doesn’t go to her.

“They sent it to Father and he sent it to me. The mission is several months long- deep cover. They have to get the clan’s permission for that.”

“Stupid.”

“Well,” Hinata says in her soft, too-reasonable voice that can annoy even Neji sometimes. “ Father might want you for our own clan needs. Guard duty or something. Or- maybe a clan head would know a kinsmen was needed to help at home. A-a baby being born, or a parent dying, you know.”

Hanabi sighs dramatically and kicks a pebble. “Okay, whatever. You said, yes, didn’t you?”

Hinata bites her lip and at that Neji finally does go to his two cousins. Hinata’s fingers find his. Its a subtle gesture but Hanabi frowns at it.

“Yes,” his wife says. “ I said yes.”

Neji knows for a fact that the letter of request is still sitting unanswered on Hinata’s desk, because, well, sometimes clan heads know a kinsmen is needed to help at home. Babies are born, and parents die, and while Hinata’s stomach is still slim and Hizashi is still hearty and hale in nine months one of these two things will have changed.

Still, it’s probably worth it to see Hanabi’s face break out into a grin that threatens to crack her normally somber face. She pumps her fist in the air.

“Yes, yes, yes! Thanks you Hinata-sama!”

Hinata’s smile is much more sanguine. “Go ahead and run to tell Father. I had not yet told him what I thought.”

And soon-to-be-spy though she is, they don’t even keep an eye on Hanabi as she runs off, they are so sure of her enthusiasm. She’ll be telling her father the news for sure, rather than lingering to eavesdrop as she has done before.

“You won’t tell her, then?” he asks.

Hinata shakes her head. “You saw her. So excited. It’s a big honor to be asked to go on this sort of mission too, but it won’t last nine months. It would worry her to know now. She’ll just have a surprise when she comes back.”

And yes, Neji did see her, but he saw Hinata more clearly, and it costs her something to keep her secret. He leans over her, and bends till his lips are touching the shell of her ear.

“Ah, she will see more clearly then. And, just think, Hanabi, who prides herself on spying on everyone in the compound, will be so mad to come back and see a great secret she didn’t succeed in ferreting out.”

Hair tickles his mouth and nose as his wife succumbs to a fit of near-silent giggles. He smiles, takes her hand and leads her on the long walk back home.


End file.
